Baz Finishes Top Independent Rider at Jerez, “The Best Weekend This Year”; WSBK Return For 2021?

by Michael Gougis

MotoAmerica Superbike racer Loris Baz, who finished fourth in the Championship this season with nine podiums, deputized for the injured Chaz Davies on the GoEleven Racing Ducati Panigale V4 R in Superbike World Competition in Jerez this weekend, taking sixth and ninth in the two races on Sunday.

The sixth place in Race One made him top Independent rider, and the team was thrilled that he had finished only 10.414 seconds behind race winner Toprak Razgatlioglu.

Speculation in European media is that with Davies retiring, the seat on the GoEleven machine may be offered to Baz, who has scored two wins in World Superbike and three top-five finishes in MotoGP. The GoEleven seat is a desirable one, with Davies putting the bike on the World Superbike podium this season and Michael Ruben Rinaldi scoring a win and podiums with it last season.

“It was not easy to try to focus in Race One, having a minute of silence just before it,” Baz was quoted as saying in a press release issued by Team GoEleven. “We were just racing for him [Dean Berta Vinales, the young racer killed in the Supersport300 race on Saturday], so the only thing is to try to have fun doing what we love and I came for this, I came here to have fun. I had a lot of fun all the weekend, so I just have to thank Ducati and GoEleven, because they just gave me one of the best weekend of the year, in term of fun I had on the bike.”